Exam Time and Happy Losar

Losar (Tibetan: ལོ་གསར་, “new year”) is a three day festival.  On the first day celebrations are usually restricted to the family, with the second and third days being the time to visit and exchange gifts with friends and more distant relatives.  This is also a time for Tibetans to visit monasteries and make offerings.

Losar is marked with activities that symbolise purification, and welcoming in the new.  So often buildings are whitewashed and thoroughly cleaned, debts are settled, people wear new clothes and special foods such as kapse (fried twists) are made.  A favorite drink is chana (barley beer) which is served warm.

Because the words “sheep’s head” and “beginning of the year” sound similar in Tibetan, it is customary to fashion a sheep’s head from coloured butter as a decoration.  Another traditional decoration that symbolizes a good harvest is the phyemar (“five-grain bucket”), a bucket with a wooden board that creates two vertical halves within.  This bucket is filled with zanba (also known as tsamba, roasted qingkebarley flour) and barley seeds, then decorated with barley ears and coloured butter.

Buddhist monks adorn the monasteries with the finest decorations, and conduct religious ceremonies and people perform rituals to drive away evil spirits.  There’s much celebrating with feasts and dancing.